Prayer for Healing: How Does It Improve Health and Can It Be Studied Scientifically?

James J. Rusthoven

For years I have been struggling to understand how prayer and healing are related. My thinking became more focussed as I became more knowledgeable about the science of clinical epidemiology. As I became more convinced that properly designed clinical studies should guide more decisions about establishing better medical treatments, I began to ask myself: Is prayer a treatment intervention like others that I had learned about and used for treating cancer? If so, can it also be subjected to scientific study, using the same tools I had acquired to study what the best chemotherapy or radiation therapy should be? At times, I was challenged to reassess my growing belief that results from randomized trials provided the best evidence to convince myself and my patients that a certain treatment was the best for their situation. What should this mean in my counselling to my patients with cancer? Should I incorporate prayer into my practice and if so, how? I knew prayer was fundamental to my faith and to my daily walk with God, but could it actually lead to improvements in the outcomes of even my sickest cancer patients? Indeed, was it my responsibility as a reformed Christian and physician to offer prayer as a therapeutic intervention?

My worldview comes out of a belief that God through Christ has redeemed our entire fallen and broken world, and in this context I should resist the traditional biomedical paradigm. I should see patients and treatments beyond their biochemical and physiological aspects and embrace a more all-encompassing view of healing and restorative principles. However, would I be overstepping my sphere of expertise and authority by praying with patients and asking probing questions about their faith life as their cancer steadily eroded their health? And how was prayer to be distinguished from the growingly popular search for individual spirituality? Last year, I had attended a conference at Wheaton College on Health, Healing, and Spirituality where I met and heard Dr David Larson, a Christian in the episcopal church, speak on his studies of the effect of spirituality on health outcomes. Early this year, an article appeared in one of the most respected journals in medicine, the Annals of Internal Medicine, by Larson and associates from the National Institute for Healthcare Research and the Center for Biomedical Ethics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The article reviews studies that seemed to indicate that "…statistically significant evidence seems to support a salutary association between …single items of religion and morbidity and mortality." The article goes on to say that "…credible studies indicating health benefits associated with religious spirituality have been published in the best clinical journals." And, finally, they conclude "Research is showing that a patient's spirituality can play an important role in ameliorating the sequelae of severe illness.". Some studies seem to suggest that it is not the specific religion that is most important, but rather the sincerity and intensity of the spirituality that counts; Jews, Muslims, and Hindus may reap similar improvements in pain relief, emotional, and relational well-being according to some studies. However, the authors then seem to turn around and caution the enthusiastic practitioner to be ethically sensitive to the "…distinct spheres of activity to ensure competence and boundaries.". The boundaries between coercion and sincere prayer with a patient can be blurred in a society hypersensitized to patient vulnerability and sometimes reprisal in the form of litigation. One respected Muslim surgeon goes on to recommend that " Physician-led prayer is acceptable only when pastoral care is not readily available, when the patient is intent on prayer with the physicians, and when the physician can pray without having to feign faith and without manipulating the patient.". Following these guidelines, prayer would require informed consent in many institutions.

My interest in this topic found an unexpected forum recently in a gathering of about 20 Christian health professionals including physicians, medical and surgical residents in training, physiotherapists, medical students, and others. The leader of the discussion was a soft-spoken resident in orthopedic surgery who had clearly taken time out of a very busy surgical resident's schedule to find three studies testing the efficacy of prayer. We were to split up into small groups; each group would study and critique one of the studies and report their findings to the whole group after about 20 minutes. The resident had done his homework well, it seemed. All present were involved in some professional way or another with McMaster University, an internationally recognized center of excellence in the study of clinical trials methodology (the discipline interested in finding the most scientifically rigorous methods to ask different clinical management questions). Everyone seemed to confidently support the choice of three randomized trials. After all, if treatments are randomly allocated to patients, did that not reduce the chance of inherent bias such that the only factor, known or unknown, that could affect the outcome would be the assigned treatment? Science meets faith! I looked forward to a rewarding evening with brothers and sisters in the faith.

The most scientifically rigorous study presented was that of Dr Randolph Byrd, published in 1988. Three hundred ninety-three patients in a coronary care unit were randomly chosen to receive or not to receive prayer from born-again Christians from around the United States. Armed with the patients' names and clinical status, these Christians offered prayers daily until hospital discharge for each patient assigned to the prayer cohort. The other cohort did not receive prayer by an assigned intercessory prayer group. The study was double-blind, meaning neither the patients nor their direct care givers were aware of which group they were in; i.e., whether they had been assigned for intercessory prayer or not. Multiple clinical variables and complications were recorded; the more interventions needed to treat complications, the less successful was deemed the recovery. Overall, the study showed that patients in the control group suffered almost twice the complication rate compared to those for whom intercessory prayers were offered. The result was statistically significant, meaning the probability that the result was a fluke and did not reflect the truth about the question was less than 5%.

Another more poignant study involved children with leukemia. Only 18 subjects were in the study; ten of the children were assigned to receive prayers daily for 15 months by a church in Washington, DC while the other 8 children were not. While the patients and treating staff were blinded to the treatments, it is unclear if the allocation of treatments were randomly assigned. At the end of the 15-month study, 8 of the 10 children for whom were alive, while only 2 in the other group were still alive. A third trial involved 120 patient with hypertension who remained on their high blood pressure medication and diets during the study. Three treatment groups were studied; one group received the laying on of hands once weekly for 15 weeks by trained healers in this procedure, one group were offered positive intention thoughts by trained healers in a room next to the room patients were in, and the third group received no prayer therapy. In this study, blood pressure was lowered to a similar degree but the group who experienced the laying on of hands had a significantly greater sense of well-being that those in the other two groups.

As each small group took its turn to report, a spokesperson methodically went through the results, reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of the study design, and in the end decided that something seemed to be positively affected by prayer. The growing enthusiasm in the room was palpable. I soon found myself getting flashbacks to my youth. What a wonderful Biblical proof it would be, I used to think, to find the remnant of Noah's ark on Mount Ararat, as some have claimed is possible or even likely. In a similar way could we prove to the world that prayer works?

Then, as the group was wrapping up the last study, I asked a question that unintentionally changed the tone of the discussion: are we sure, I asked, that prayer is susceptible to scientific scrutiny? Can we assume that the results of prayer follow the same laws or norms for creation that allow other interventions to undergo scientific assessment? After all, we believe with considerable confidence that the right vaccine will prevent polio, a once incurable and often debilitating scourge. What laws does prayer follow such that our methodology which is based on probability principles would allow us to reproducibly verify and to generalize the results to a certain patient population? If studied with the proper clinical trials, can prayer be offered to patients so that, with confidence, I can assure the patient that prayer has an an X percent chance of adding to his or her quality of life, feeling of well-being, or of extending that person's life by weeks, or even years? Or, is this thinking really a trap of our scientific paradigm in late 20th century medicine; i.e., can science really lead us to the truth about our faith life in the same way that it can lead us to the truth about our physiological, biological, and physical well-being. Whether my hypothesis was true or not was not as important to me as the fact that the entire discussion that evening assumed that prayer was an intervention like an herbal medication or high blood pressure pill taken from the medicine chest. Just because someone decides to use the best scientific method of the day to test a hypothesis does not necessarily mean that the question is answerable by science.

But then I raised more disturbing questions to the group; what if the result of a prayer study was resoundingly negative? What if there was no absolute difference in the degree of pain experienced by the subject with arthritis, for example? What if there was a difference but it was not statistically significant? Furthermore, perhaps more studies had been done, were found to be negative but were not published out of concern for the negative impact on society's perception of prayer and Christianity (publication bias). If we would treat the results like other interventions, what would be our options as caregivers in translating the results into changes in practice? If there was no difference in the incidence of death from meningitis in the study of a new antibiotic compared to an existing standard antibiotic, then we would likely discard the new one, stay with the old standard, and test something else. If a clinical trial showed that the number of deaths from leukemia were no different whether a preassigned group offered prayer or not, what would we do with prayer? Some Christians believe that such a result could only mean that we have not prayed hard enough or sincerely enough. If that were true, why are true, sincere Christians not immortal? Have martyrs for the faith died because they did not pray sincerely enough in the end? What could we say about prayer to the already skeptical non-Christian colleague who doesn't believe that prayer helps? Do we admit that it does not work? Or do we start self-critiquing the study design and find a methodological way out by acknowledging scientific ineptitude? I think we must consider that prayer, by its nature, may not be understandable in terms of science.

I continue to be troubled by what I read concerning this topic. In some ways, science reduces prayer to the level of generic spirituality. For example, Dr Larry Dossey has tried to explore the possible mechanisms of prayer by applying models of quantum physics and proposing that intercessory prayer is a manifestation of the essential unity of human and divine consciousness that is not limited to space and time. In this sense, he goes on to say, nondirected prayers (e.g., "May the best possible outcome prevail") may be more effective. The idea of generic spirituality has become increasingly popular in our culture and Christians have seen this as a historical opportunity to speak out about their faith in a more accepting climate. But I also think that Christians must think carefully with one eye on the Bible and the other eye on the audience. We must first understand the distinction between biblical directives about prayer (ie, trust in God and selfless service to God and our neighbor) and the human desire to have personal needs met on demand. If the latter prevails, the exploration of spiritual needs will be at best narrowly focussed and confined to crisis situations. Few would deny that prayer in our day is often most sincere and specific when a crisis has occurred, not uncommonly related to failure of health. The Bible does not teach that we confine our prayers to crises; rather, we are asked to pray continually, that we may not falter or stray from a life in the Lord. Pray is multifaceted; we pray to praise God, to ask forgiveness, to acknowledge his power, patience, kindness, and righteousness. We pray to offer thanks. We pray that God's Kingdom be accomplished on this earth and on the new earth. We are His instruments of that accomplishment and, while we can ask for forgiveness or a reprieve from an impending disaster as did our Lord before he was crucified, we must never forget that the important result is not that we can predict the probability of getting what we want. Rather, a successful and effective prayer teaches us to walk humbly with our God.

In fact, there seems to be a tension in this regard for at least some Christians who are studying prayer with randomized clinical trials but also acknowledging that answered prayer does not always mean answered in the way we hope or want at the time. Dale Matthews, who I mentioned earlier as the principal investigator of a randomized trial testing the efficacy of intercessory prayer, says in his book The Faith Factor: "Spiritual maturity involves trusting that God will answer our prayers according to our real needs as he sees them, and not as we, with our limited vision, see them…. Our petitionary prayer should not be an attempt to control God but, rather, to relinquish control of our problems and to acknowledge God's presence and activity in our lives. After all, the ultimate goal of prayer is not to get our needs met or to get what we want; it is to draw us nearer to God."

Will Christians continue to explore the outcomes of prayer on a population basis? Matthews feels that we must continue with clinical studies to answer questions such as these:

1) What method or type of prayer brings the best results for patients who pray for their own recovery from physical illness?

2) How do the frequency and duration of prayer affect medical outcomes? Christ gives us some teaching on the duration as well as location for prayer: "But when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men…they will receive their reward in full. When you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. (Matt. 6:5-8)

3) Do patient attitudes regarding the importance and effectiveness of prayer influence health outcomes?

4) How can the effectiveness shown in studies of patients with certain diseases be extrapolated to other diseases? Or, do we require studies in other diseases to "hold up" these initial positive results?

5) More longitudinal studies should be done to answer questions like "Do those who attend church weekly develop fewer cases of cancer than those who attend once a year or less?" In fact, some studies have already begun, such as a 15-year study comparing the mortality rates of members of religious and non-religious kibbutzim in Israel.

As I completed this presentaton, I noticed a front page story in the Life section of the June 29, 2000 issue of US TODAY with the title: "For seniors, prayer good for body as well as soul". The study was a prospective cohort study of 4,000 senior citizens who were asked about health problems and whether they prayed, mediated or read the Bible. The study authors reported that seniors who never prayed had a 50% greater risk of dying during the 6-year study period compared to those who prayed at least once per month. Those who prayed more often had no additional benefit. While I rejoice that this type of article is now acceptable to print in the newspapers of our society, the article also demonstrates the struggle with interpreting such studies. "The findings" says the article, "could bolster a belief in a divine being. [But the study author] sticks to the scientific explanation….Prayer and meditation are known to reduce stress and thus can dampen the body's production of damaging stress hormones such as adrenaline." A university psychologist and critic states: "…the study and others like it, promote the harmful notion that prayer can protect against illness and death. Yet people who get sick despite prayer may blame themselves for not praying hard enough…'That's not good medicine or good science'".

Do not misinterpret me. I am not speaking against the need to recognize the spiritual needs of patients with illness, in my case those with cancer. Rather, I am sounding a note of caution. We must be careful not to secularize our idea of spirituality by assuming it is an end unto itself. Similarly, we must not look to prayer as a generic tonic that is predictable and generalizable to a diverse group of people with common ailments or needs. We as Christian health care providers must take advantage of a new climate of awareness and need that goes beyond a narrow and oppressive biotechnical, stimulus-response mentality. We must proclaim the Lordship of Christ among the well and the sick, among the poor and the wealthy, among all that are God's creatures, and seek the truth of His Kingdom. But we also must be careful not to use the tools of science in such a way as to reduce the meaning and wholeness of prayer in the process. I am not convinced that prayer can be handled scientifically like we can handle other aspects of creation where we dissect and focus on a small part of a whole, then try to reassemble it with new insight and meaning of the whole. Perhaps this can be done but I am concerned that the present methods have more pitfalls than insights into the meaning of prayer in the context of the restoration of health.

The Source of Moral Norms

Kenneth W. Kemp

What are moral norms? By what standard do we measure conduct? There are several sets of moral predicates, each of which plays its role in moral evaluation — good and bad, right and wrong, required and forbidden. Although the latter sets take most naturally as their subject human actions, the first is more general. Goodness and badness can be predicated not only of human actions, but of individual human beings, either of their characters or of their lives.

I suggest that, in accordance with the etymology of the term, we take moral norms, and moral evaluation, to be focally about character (Latin, mos). That makes our first question the question of how we can distinguish good from bad character.

At the beginning of this century, G. E. Moore argued that moral goodness is an indefinable, that it is a property quite unlike any natural properties of things and one that we recognize by a kind of moral sense or intuition. Others accepting Moore’s claim that goodness is a quite unlike any natural properties, but doubting that any sense could be made of such things as non-natural properties, argued that to call something good is only to express our own emotions towards the object of approbation and to urge others to join us in our approval. If moral “judgments” really are just expressions of our emotions, then there can be no more to moral discourse than propaganda and the concept of moral indignation is incoherent.

St Thomas Aquinas, building on foundations already laid by Aristotle, offered us a better account of moral goodness.

We must speak of good and bad in actions, as of good and bad in things.[1]

About goodness in general, he has this to say:

The essence of goodness consists in this, that something is desirable.… For it is clear that something is desirable insofar as it is perfect: for everything desires its own perfection.[2]

In the limited time available to me, I will not elaborate on St Thomas’ thesis that desire can, despite original sin, still serve as a clue to goodness. I will focus rather on the concept of perfection. We can understand this concept by thinking first of the products of human art and then of natural objects. Consider an inventor trying to produce a useful machine. He will make many prototypes as he attempts to perfect the machine, i.e., to give it all the features a good machine should have. He will, of course, try to eliminate as many problems in the machine as he can. He will follow the rule laid down by Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite (and cited by St Thomas):

Goodness comes from the whole cause, badness from any defect.[3]

Aristotle understood nature and all natural motions as directed towards some end. We do not need to accept his full philosophy of nature to lay the foundations for ethics. It is more than enough if we see how this applies in the world of living things. If we want to understand physiology, say embryological development or temperature regulatory mechanisms in animals, it is not enough to understand the biochemical processes that cause them. Why does the mesoderm develop? To lay the foundations for a variety of specialized organs necessary to the animal’s survival. Why do human beings perspire? Because by that means they can keep their body temperature down to the level required for efficient continuation of the biochemical reactions necessary to life. The explanation in each case requires reference to ends, not just to mechanisms.

This lays the foundation for the normative discipline of medicine. Health norms are not determined merely by calculating an average. They do not change during an epidemic. They are established by recognizing life as what the organism is aimed at (the good of the organism) and then determining what is necessary for life (good health).

In this we can recognize an interesting similarity between organism and machine, and an interesting difference. In both cases there is a characteristic activity (called the function in machines) on the basis of which the machine or organism is said to be in good condition. The function of machines is external to the machine itself; it is ultimately determined by the user. The characteristic activity of animals, by contrast, is not external; it is part of their nature.

In health, and in machine evaluation, the Dionysian Principle applies. Good health requires goodness in all respects. A person with a weak heart is not in good health, no matter how well his other systems work. A car with a rusty body is not in good condition, even if the motor has just been rebuilt.

Let us apply this insight, not to the state of animal bodies, but to animal behavior. In social animals there are certain modes of action that are necessary for successful social life and others that are destructive of it. Goodness in social animals consists in the former; badness in the latter. So, when mother chimpanzees teach their babies appropriate social behavior, we can say that they are teaching their babies to be good chimpanzees. Since good behavior in social animals includes an important component of attention to the good of others — altruism — such animal behavior is sometimes called moral. This, I believe, is a mistake. Animal behavior, be it ever so altruistic, is significantly different from human behavior in ways too close to the concept of character to make the application of the term moral to animal behavior helpful. The primary difference, of course, is that animal behavior does not involve choice.

So what constitutes goodness in human beings? To answer the question of what constitutes goodness in any type of thing, we have to ask what is distinctive of a thing of that type. The distinctiveness of any kind of thing, on Aristotle’s analysis, is that at which the type is aimed. A good politician is not merely a person who recognizes the common good and the most effective means of attaining it. An economist or public health doctor might do that. A good politician is one who can get policies conducive to the common good put into law. The alternative claim that a good politician is one who manages to stay in power is either a bitter joke or reflects a misunderstanding of the true nature of politics.

A good human being, then, is one who exhibits the trait that is distinctive to man, and that, of course, is rationality. There are two ways that a human being can do this — in his thoughts and in his actions. In thought, rationality makes it possible for us to know things about the world in a distinctive way. Every dog knows, in some sense, that meat is nourishing for dogs and that paper is not. Human beings know, as a proposition articulating a relation between concepts that meat is nourishing for dogs. Further, he can know why meat is nourishing for dogs and why paper is not. Someone who knows all that, who has some understanding of the science of canine nutrition, has, to some extent, perfected himself, has actualized his potentiality to know things, has developed intellectual virtues. If we are hesitant to say of such a man that he is, insofar as he understands canine nutrition, a good man, it is because there is another way in which human beings exhibit rationality, which we dare not allow to escape our attention when discussing goodness in human beings.

That second way, of course, is in our conduct. There is a popular way of talking about human conduct that identifies rationality with maximizing the satisfaction of our personal desires (presumably something like personal wealth, power, and pleasure) and morality with some kind of side constraint on our attempt to satisfy our desires. Aristotle and St Thomas offer a much more sensible alternative.

Rationality allows us to recognize the things we use and interact with for what they really are and to recognize certain ways of treating them that conform to our own animal, social, and rational nature. Natural resources are things which we may use, but with a recognition that as animals we depend on the environment for our very lives. We must use it in a way that does not destroy it. Animals are also things, but because they can feel pain and interact with us in certain ways, we may use them, as beasts of burden or as food, but must not treat them in a cruel or wasteful fashion. Otherwise, we risk making ourselves cruel and thereby unsuiting ourselves for social life. Human beings are not things at all, but persons who must be treated as beings to whom certain things are due. Without that fundamental respect for persons, social life would be impossible. Worse, failing to make a distinction between persons and things, we fail to use rationality to guide our actions. Thus, the habit of justice is good and all the various kinds of injustice (favoritism and prejudice; excessive severity and laxity in punishment) are bad.

Rationality also allows us to recognize that our emotions are at best uncertain guides to conduct. Desire for food leads us to eat, which is good. But we often desire to eat too much or to eat the wrong things. Sometimes, depression or excessive concern with personal appearance leads people to want not to eat even when they should eat. Rational conduct can thus be contrasted to purely emotional conduct. Temperance — rationality in responding to our desires — is good. Gluttony, lust and insensibility — acting on the basis of excessive or defective emotions — is bad.

As for health, an understanding of man based in a proper philosophy of nature, one which allows us to recognize in natural beings an end (telos) towards which they are directed, allows us to establish a standard on the basis of which we can distinguish good and bad character and conduct, i.e., a basis on which we can establish norms. Other normative terms, e.g., right and wrong, can be derived from this basis.

To all this, someone might reply with some bewilderment, “But how can one talk about morality without talking about religion?” The idea that morality depends upon religious belief is a common one in the contemporary world, but, I think, a mistaken one. St Paul, in his letter to the Romans, writes:

The Gentiles do not have the Law… [but] their conduct shows that what the Law commands is written in their hearts. Their consciences also show that this is true, since their thoughts sometimes accuse them and sometimes defend them.[4]

C. S. Lewis has shown in The Abolition of Man, a striking consonance between the moral principles of Christianity and those of other cultures.

Nevertheless, Christianity does add something to morality as St Thomas shows in three places.

First, in his Treatise on Man’s Last End, he builds on the natural morality developed by Aristotle. Aristotle had argued in the Nicomachean Ethics, that a full exercise of human rationality would (presuming that what he called the goods of fortune were present) result in a life centered on the goods of friendship and contemplation and characterized by the exercise of the moral virtues. Those goods are, more or less, available in this life and they are the only goods and virtues Aristotle can know on the basis of reason and experience. They are the only ones he discusses. St Thomas, on the basis of revelation, knows that there is a further good available after death. This good, the Beatific Vision, or to put it in Aristotelian terms, a friendship with and knowledge of God, is not due to us on account of our nature, and therefore what we need to do to attain it is not something we can figure out for ourselves. We have to be told.[5]

Second, St Thomas introduces his Treatise on Law,[6] by contrasting the internal principles which lead to good actions (good habits, or virtues) with the external principle which (or Who) leads to good actions in us, namely, God. One of the ways in which God does this is by instruction. Some of this instruction is done by implanting in us natural inclinations to good, preeminently the inclination to live in society and to know God.[7] Even though those inclinations, and our own powers of reason, should in principle, be sufficient for good conduct, in fact, they ensure no such thing. Sometimes the reasoning is too complex (or our selfish passions interfere) and we make mistakes. In general, lying is wrong, we think, but telling this lie would be so useful. Sometimes we need the help of our fellowmen, which we get first from our parents and second from the civil government. Unfortunately, human law cannot help us much with our desires. Worse, even some actions are not efficiently regulated by human law. A second way that God helps man behave well, a second way that he supports morality, is by repeating in explicit legal form what we should be able to figure out for ourselves. So, we have the Ten Commandments and other precepts that repeat the natural law. Christianity gives us access to those norms, now recast into Divine Law

Third, in his Treatise on Grace,[8] St Thomas discusses the ways in which God gives man direct assistance in his effort to be good. In particular, God might either “move man’s soul to know or will or do something” or “infuse a habitual gift into the soul.”[9] He might, of course, do that to or for a person who had no religious commitments whatsoever. Without such grace, such a person would be stuck in his sinfulness.[10] But in addition to this grace, Christ has instituted efficacious signs, or sacraments, by which further grace may be obtained. So, in the effects of participation in the sacramental life of the Church, one can find a third connection between religion and morality. Living a morally upright life is difficult. Those who would lead such a life need all the help they can get and in showing us the life of sacrament and prayer, the Church shows us how that help can be had.

Christianity is important then, not for a knowledge of the features and precepts of the moral life, but to our ability to live it.


[1] De bono et malo in actionibus oportet loqui sicut de bono et malo in rebus.— ST, 1a2ae, 18.1
[2] Ratio enim boni in hoc consistit, quod aliquid sit appetibile.… Manifestum est autem quod unumquodque est appetibile secundum quod est perfectum: nam omnia appetunt suam perfectionem.— ST, 1a, 5.1
[3] Bonum ex integra causa; malum ex quocumque defectu.—Divine Names iv; cf. 1a2ae, 18.4 ad 3.
[4] Romans 2:14-15.
[5] S.T. 1a2ae, 91.4.
[6] S.T., 1a2ae, 90-108.
[7] S.T., 1a2ae, 94.2.
[8] S.T., 1a2ae, 109-114.
[9] S.T., 1a2ae, 110.2
[10] S.T., 1a2ae, 110.6.

Hope’s Radical Legacy

(the transforming influence of the Judaeo-Christian concept of hope on Europe's identity)

Jeff Fountain

1. What has made Europe Europe?


Europe, as a quick glance at the world map shows, is not really a separate continent. A more honest and modest description would be that it is simply the western peninsula of the Eurasian land mass. The late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin observed that ‘for countless millennia Europe has been the cul-de-sac into which the surplus population of Asia has drifted and stopped because the sea stopped further advance’[i]. Indigenous Europeans are classified ethnologically as Caucasians. The languages of Europe - Greek, Celtic, Italic, Germanic and Balto-Slavic - belong to the Indo-European family. The philosophical ideas, the myths and legends, the gods and goddesses of the classical world are extensions of the Asian thought-world, particularly that of India.

How, then, has Europe acquired a distinct identity as a separate continent, and as a civilisation clearly distinguished from Asia? The simple answer is that for 2000 years Europe has been shaped by a single Hope told in a Story and recorded in a Book - rather, a collection of books - called Biblia, or the Scriptures. Dedicated messengers risked their lives to cross Europe’s cultural borders so that their former enemies from other ethnic groups could share in this hope. Often these messengers had to invent written alphabets to enable the recipient tribes and peoples to read this story. Ulfilas, for example, created the Gothic alphabet in the 4th century, while in the 9th century Cyril and Methodius devised the Cyrillic alphabet still used across the Slavic world. Most of these messengers were recruited from monasteries, which were also the publishing houses of the day, each with its scriptorium where manuscripts were laboriously copied by hand. The availability of this Biblia ensured that the story could be told and retold week after week, year after year. Festivals, music and art became centred around this story and around this hope, which shaped the Europeans’ world and life view.

By the end of the first millennium, virtually all the European peoples from the Iberian peninsula to the Urals, from Greece to Iceland, had been exposed to some form of this story. To the degree that they embraced this hope, their collective lifestyle was transformed. This is the singular source of Europe’s robust and unique self-awareness.

What then was the source of this transforming Hope, this powerful Story? For it did not originate among those barbarians who had swept into the western end of Asia, demolishing the proud edifice of the Roman Empire. Neither did it stem from the Greco-Roman polytheism that dominated the Mediterranean at the start of the Christian era. No, its origins were indisputably Semitic.


2. Hope - the Judaeo-Christian revelation


Judaism (or more correctly, the Hebraic worldview[ii]) introduced to the contemporary world a revolution in understanding about God - and thus about humankind, about history and the future, and about the meaning of life. This radical revelation that came through Abraham and Moses, and later was transferred through Judaism to Christianity, inspired a concept of hope unknown outside of cultures influenced by this Judaeo-Christian tradition.[iii]

For hope is not a universally self-evident concept. In Europe one often takes the concept of hope for granted, largely unaware that ‘mankind was taught to hope by Christianity’, as Swiss theologian Emil Brunner has observed, ‘that is, to look to the future for the realisation of the true meaning of life’[iv].

How radical this hope was, and how different the Hebrew concept of God, becomes apparent when we see what a mean bunch of gods Israel’s neighbours worshipped. The Canaanite god Molech demanded baby sacrifice. Priests of Baal slashed themselves in orgiastic frenzy. Osiris, the Egyptian god of the underworld, was slain by his own brother. Many of these gods and goddesses were brutal and bloodthirsty, vengeful and arbitrary, in constant conflict or unbridled sexual relationships with each other. Such gods were often the projections of fallen humanness writ large. They were not the inspiration of hope.

The God of the Hebrews was totally different. He was transcendent, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Yet he was personal and involved in his creation. The Hebrew Bible reveals him as: “YHWH, YHWH, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”[v] The revelation of such a God did inspire hope; it opened up revolutionary prospects of the future for the Hebrews. The Children of Israel were to become the People of Hope, radically different from the pagan peoples because they represented the God of Hope, who was radically different from the pagan gods. Israel’s very raison d’etre was to channel hope back into a hopeless world![vi]

Biblical hope then begins and ends with the revelation of God. The answers we give to epistemological questions of knowledge, metaphysical questions of origins (ontology), the nature of the universe (cosmology), purpose and destiny (teleology), and moral questions of ethics, values and norms (axiology) are shaped by our beliefs about deity. Such root beliefs determine our values and behaviour.

We see this clearly when our starting point differs from the Hebrew view. Buddhists (pantheists) and Hindus (polytheists) do not use the language of hope. Both religions teach the suppression of individual desire and longing. When its cycle of rebirth is ended, the individual soul, Atman, must be absorbed into Brahman, the universal world soul, or impersonal ultimate reality. Reincarnation offers little prospect of hope as it is a potentially endless process of recycled existences as humans, animals or even insects. Belief in Karma interprets a person’s circumstances as the result of actions in previous incarnations. Suffering should not be alleviated therefore, as it is a just reward for past wrong deeds. If cut short in this present life, it will be visited upon the person in future incarnations.

Muslims (monotheists) fatalistically accept everything that happens as being the will of Allah - Insha Allah. Hope for the Moslem is an uncertain affair. Only death in a jihad guarantees the faithful access to paradise. Suffering poses a problem for the Moslem, as if Allah wills everything that happens, who should dare alleviate suffering?



Animist cultures (polytheistic) - including Europe’s pre-Christian beliefs - are dominated by the fear of unseen powers which control events and circumstances. Fear and fatalism rule.

The Hebrew revelation of hope is earthed in a Story, in historical events with historical people. In contrast, the classical - and eastern - view of reality is trans-historical: ‘Accidental happenings of history cannot prove eternal truths of reason’. Yet the Biblical hope which was to spread throughout Europe in the first millennium was essentially a story, the story of humankind’s beginnings and estrangement from the Creator; the story of God’s dealing with one man Abraham and his offspring Israel with a view to reconciling all the earth’s peoples to their Creator. The Bible is a record of happenings in time and space.

This Story unfolds further into the New Testament, which describes God clothing himself in human flesh in the person of the infant Jesus - an historical person at a moment in history. The New Testament claims that this Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah through whom God would not only reconcile all peoples, but in fact restore all of fallen creation[vii]. The Jews however had expected Messiah to be a conquering king, and did not recognise the man who hung on a Roman cross suffering the ignominy of a criminal’s execution as the sacrificial Lamb of God who took away the world’s sin. Three days after he had been declared dead by professional executioners, the New Testament reports the literal and physical resurrection of Jesus - again in a particular time and place - in defiance all the rules of scientific rationalism.

Each of us will have our own reactions to this claim, ranging from incredulity to full acceptance; but understanding the role that Christian hope has played in shaping European society requires understanding what that hope claims to be. Paul the Apostle, himself radically transformed from being chief opponent of the church after his alleged encounter with the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus, recognised this resurrection event to be the very the cornerstone of Christian hope. Either it happened, and Christianity was true; or it did not happen, Christianity was a hoax, and there was no Biblical hope. “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins,” he wrote to believers in Corinth. “If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.”[viii]

The transformation of the frightened disciples into fearless preachers certainly authenticates their claim to have seen the risen Jesus, walked with him, talked with him, broken bread with him. They did not have it all analysed and systematised, but some of the implications were startlingly clear to them: if Jesus had risen from the dead, then he was who he claimed to be, the Son of God. What he then said about life and death, about heaven and hell, about God and Satan, and about forgiveness and judgement - in fact, about any subject - was true.

The hope then that the resurrection of this one man in an ancient middle-eastern land offered to the peoples of Europe in the first millennium had an eternal dimension: physical death was no longer the final reality[ix]. Beyond the grave there was hope of immortality and eternal fellowship with God. Jesus had anchored hope for the soul, firm and secure, on the other side of death[x].

But Christian hope also claimed a contemporary dimension. Hope of heaven inspired hope here on earth - hope of liberation from the fear of demons, spirits and capricious gods; hope of relationship with God the Creator Father; hope of reconciliation with one’s neighbour, the breaking of the cycle of vengeance between individuals, families, tribes and nations. Most of the laws of Moses, and the teachings of Jesus, were concerned with life here and now. The implication of the resurrection was that with the power of death and sin broken, men and women could experience radical changes in their own life styles.

The contemporary dimension of Christian hope also embraced the future of human society, the fulfilment of God’s promises in history. The central theme of these promises was the coming of the Kingdom, the Rule of God on planet earth. Unlike eastern or animist religions, where life is seen as an endless procession of cycles, Christian hope anticipated a climax to history. Just as a river eventually found its way to the sea, no matter how much it meandered en route, so too history would eventually climax in the fulfilment of God’s purposes. Isaiah promised the birth of a child on whose shoulders the government would be placed, and that of the spread of his government and peace there would be no end[xi]. Daniel’s interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream of a statue that was smashed by a stone, which then grew to become a huge mountain filling the earth, foresaw the triumph of the Kingdom of God in world history[xii]. Joel promised that God’s Spirit would be poured out on all peoples.[xiii] Zechariah foretold the day when the Lord will be king over all the earth[xiv]. Jesus himself likened the growth of the Kingdom to yeast spreading throughout the dough, or to a small mustard seed that grows into the largest of all plants[xv]. John proclaimed in the last book of the Bible that ‘the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever’[xvi].

Thus the Judaeo-Christian concept of hope, with both eternal and contemporary dimensions, was prepared for transplantation among Europe’s peoples.

3. The transforming story


When Paul was led as a prisoner along the Via Appia towards the nerve centre of an empire that ruled most of the known world with apparent invincibility, few foresaw that his message - which seemed foolishness to the Greeks and weakness to the Romans - would overturn Rome within three centuries. Yet into the disorder ensuing from Rome's implosion came legions of Hope-bringers claiming allegiance to the risen Jesus. They told the same Story from the same Book. They told it to the Greeks and to the Romans, to the Gauls and the Celts, the Scots and the Picts, the Angles and the Saxons, the Frisians and the Franks, the Alemanni and the Suevi, the Balts and the Slavs, and eventually to the Vikings. They confronted the animist beliefs of Europe's barbarians, often through power encounters. Patrick smashed the altars on which Irish Druids had sacrificed children annually to persuade the offended sun god, Lugh (or Bel) to lengthen the days again. Boniface exposed the impotence of the thunder god, Thor, by felling the sacred oak tree in Geismar, Germany.

They set up communities of young and old which became the buildings blocks of the new order of European society, centres for learning, agriculture, commerce, the arts and even government. The new hope inspired by this new set of beliefs led directly to values and behaviours which over the centuries have become known as ‘European’, and are generally taken for granted as being self-evident and ‘common sense’. These include a) the linear concept of time and history, b) human dignity, c) man's calling to steward and shape the environment, d) the value of work, e) moral order, f) social mediating structures, and g) social political values. But these concepts did not stem from the pagan or classical worldviews of pre-Christian Europe. The books accredited to Moses, particularly the laws brought down from the mountain on stone - in a certain place at a certain time - have underpinned the development of European civilisation. The Ten Commandments have been the conscious model for the laws of most if not all European nations at some stage of their history. Summed up brilliantly by Jesus in two short easy-to-remember sayings, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart’ and ‘Love your neighbour as yourself’, these laws have left an indelible imprint on the European conscience.

Moses’ famous opening words to the Bible, ‘In the beginning, God...’ assert the ground of hope and lead directly a few verses later to the biblical concept of human dignity, when he writes that God created humans, male and female, in his own image.[xvii] Let’s be clear about this: there is no other basis for human dignity. If humans are mere accidental cosmic freaks, there are no grounds for dignity. Pantheism and polytheism likewise offer little grounds for the uniqueness of the individual person. More dignity is offered to holy cows in some eastern societies than to humans. Yet even long after they have rejected the metaphysical basis of human dignity, secular humanists and marxists have continued to talk about human dignity, human rights, norms and values, love and meaning. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, championing the ‘right to life, liberty, education, and equality before the law; to freedom of movement, religion, association, and information’, presupposes values directly inherited from the Judeao-Christian tradition, and reflects hope’s radical legacy.

Integrated within a worldview with the God of the Bible at the centre, the Middle Ages thus reflected ‘life under the sacred canopy’.[xviii]



4. Bastard offspring


No-one pretends that the kingdom of God had fully come in Europe as the second millennium began. However some have called Europe ‘God’s experiment’[xix] drawing a parallel with God’s attempt to demonstrate life in his Kingdom through Israel in the Old Testament. The transformation of European cultures was thus a ‘glimpse of the coming Kingdom’, a foretaste of what would happen when Jesus returned to renew all creation. The gospel of hope had indeed transformed culture after culture, but it was also true that pagan beliefs and practices made deep inroads into accepted Christian traditions, including Christmas and easter festivities as we still celebrate them today.[xx] Others depict Europe's history as a synthesis between Christianity on the one hand, and paganism influenced by the Greco-Roman civilisation and humanism on the other. Christianity may well have emerged from the first millennium as the top-layer, with paganism and humanism as the undercurrent. But the second millennium would see a powerful renascence of neo-paganism.

By the 11th century, power politics and wealth had all too often corrupted the church’s leadership and discredited its message. The Great Schism in that century between east and west, Latin and Orthodox, has led to consequences Bosnia still suffers today. A few decades later, the misguided Crusades created a 900-year-old legacy of mistrust between the so-called ‘Christian’ west and the Muslim world. Reform movements like the Franciscans called the Church back to Biblical fidelity.

Such movements culminated in the 16th century with the Reformation, the second great divide in Christianity, when western Europeans were forced to choose religious allegiances and the frontlines were drawn up between Protestant and Catholic much as they remain until today. The Reformation recovered the principle of justification by faith and personal accountability before God. The importance of the individual in God’s plan, faith in the consistency of God’s laws and hope in God’s rulership over the universe were the ingredients of the explosion of scientific enquiry into an orderly universe created by an orderly God. While Copernicus (1473-1543) and Galileo (1564-1642) had both been muzzled by Roman dogma, Protestant Christianity encouraged the scientific revolution. Such a revolution could never have grown out of Asian pantheism which viewed physical reality as maya, or illusion; or out of Germanic, Greek or Latin pagan worldviews with their many gods and an unstable, disordered, unpredictable universe. With a personal faith in the transcendent God of the Bible, Sir Isaac Newton boldly probed the limits of knowledge and laid the foundations for physics accepted up until Einstein postulated his theories of relativity.[xxi]

But Europe’s new open intellectual climate allowed seeds of false hope to be sown, seeds that would undermine the very faith foundations that made them possible in the first place. The Renaissance and the subsequent Enlightenment were a revival of Greek and Roman classicism and elements of their occult and pagan worldview. In short, the door opened for monism (Bruno- the belief that everything is one), pantheism (Spinoza - everything is God, God is everything), rationalism (Descartes - reason is the ultimate arbiter of truth) and deism (Voltaire - religion and ethics based on reason). Newton had understood the universe as ruled sovereignly by God, but now the universe was viewed as a closed box where God no longer intervened. The modern age of ‘life in the iron cage’ [xxii]of Newtonian laws of cause and effect had arrived. The Cartesian illusion of objectivity, of the human mind as a disembodied eye surveying the world without being part of it, was to dominate Europe right up until our own day.

So deeply rooted, however, were the values of Europe’s Christian heritage that enlightenment humanism adopted many concepts as if they were self-evident. The idea of unlimited human progress, for example, the locomotive of modern Europe, is simply a secularised version of the Hebrew revelation that history has a goal, that time has linear direction. Marxism, a specific form of atheistic humanism, likewise persisted in ‘squatting without paying the rent’ with its perspective of history moving in linear fashion towards a communist utopia. There could have been no Marxism without the Judeo-Christian roots with which Marx himself grew up. Given this pedigree, these rationalistic worldviews which have dominated much of Europe and the world for the past century can fairly be described as ‘bastard offspring’.


5. Hope for the 3rd millennium?


Where have these secular hopes left us in Europe as we rapidly approach the third millennium of the Christian era? The master architect of twentieth-century, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), saw clearly what happens when we reject the Biblical God as our starting point. The hero of his short essay, The Madman, pronounced that God was dead. For the German philosopher, this was not merely a rejection of a religious ideal, of a hobby for Sundays. Profound consequences for all of life followed. Everything based on God’s existence was dead. If God was dead, then hope was dead. Man was dead. Love, truth, morals, communion and community were all dead. Life was absurd and should be lived dangerously. Yet it would be eight decades before this far-reaching obituary of God would be published on the cover of TIME magazine. Nietzsche’s madman realises he has come too early. “I am not yet at the right time. This prodigious event is still on its way, and is travelling - it has not yet reached men’s ears.... This deed is as yet further from them than the furthest star - and yet they have done it.”[xxiii] Only now, after the hopes of the 19th and 20th centuries have eventually been shown to be false, has modern man begun to understand the madman.

Life at the end of the second millennium has thus become ‘life in chaos’,[xxiv] as Nietzsche perceptively predicted. Building the future on the critical powers of human reason required certain faith-assumptions, which themselves eventually came under the scrutiny of reason. Newbigin points to the ‘collapse into subjectivity which is represented by the movement of deconstruction and the rise of so-called post-modernity,’ in which reality has no objective meaning. A kaleidoscope of ever-shifting images has replaced the reality which modernity saw as something to be understood. The popularity of astrology, New Age and other pagan beliefs reminds us that when Europe loses the Story, the Book and the Hope, it becomes once again merely a part of Asia.

Europe on the brink of the third millennium has become post-Christian, post-communist and post- modern. But anything named ‘post-’ is temporary. What will come next? Our Age of Chaos has its parallel with the disorder following the collapse of Rome. The messengers who then provided the building blocks of the new order came with a Story, a Book and a Hope. They radically reshaped Europe’s identity. They passed on the ancient Hebrew beliefs of an Almighty God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who had himself become human flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. The Story of Jesus Christ gave hope and intelligibility to the whole of human experience. It provided a new starting point for Europe in the first millennium. Will it provide a new starting point for Europe in the Third millennium?



Endnotes:
[i]Lesslie Newbigin, New birth into a living hope, address to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, June 1996
[ii]Judaism emerged as the name of the faith of the Jews only after the exile of the Kingdom of Judah to Babylon in 586 B.C., long after Abraham, Moses and David.
[iii] see David Aikman, Hope, the heart’s great quest, ch.2, ‘The Revolution of Judaism’; Vine Books, Ann Arbor, 1995
[iv]Emil Brunner, Faith, Hope and Love (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1956, p43)
[v]Exodus 34:6,7
[vi]Significantly, the national anthem of the modern state of Israel is called the Hatikvah, ‘the hope’.
[vii] see Colossians 1:20
[viii]1 Corinthians 15:17,19
[ix]1 Corinthians 15:12-57
[x]Hebrews 6:19,20
[xi]Isaiah 9:7
[xii]Daniel 2:35,44
[xiii]Joel 2:28
[xiv]Zechariah 14:9
[xv]Matt.13:31-33
[xvi]Rev 11:15
[xvii]Genesis 1:26-28
[xviii]Peter Berger’s phrase, parallel to his description of modernity as ‘life in the iron cage’, and post-modernity, ‘life in chaos’
[xix]e.g. the Dutch theologian van Ruler
[xx] Anton Wessels, Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? (SCM Press, London 1994), pp.119, 145, 153-6
[xxi] The relationship between Protestant Christianity, its Jewish roots and science is noted in research by American economist, John Hulley, on the religious affiliation of the Nobel Prize winners for natural science, from 1901-1990. His research reveals that 64% were Protestant, 22% Jewish, 11% Catholic and only 3% from non-Judeao-Christian backgrounds. (Source: Nederlands Dagblad, 11.3.98)
[xxii] see footnote 18
[xxiii]Nietzsche, Friedrich, The Madman
[xxiv] see footnote 18

World Peace Through A Global Ethic

Leroy Garrett

A slogan presently being considered in ecumenical circles is "No world peace without religious peace." Hans Kung has expressed it in these propositions:

Without peace between religions, war between the civilizations.
No peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions.
No dialogue between the religions without investigation of the foundation of the religions.

The slogan expresses a disturbing truth, that religious disunity is the root of most conflict between nations. Even today it appears to be the case, whether in N. Ireland, Afghanistan, Albania, Kosovo. All through history conflict between the religions of the world has played a dominant role in the wars of the world.

Kung has stated a viable thesis: Without peace among the religions of the world there can be no peace among the nations of the world.

It is my theses that peace -- and I would add unity -- are realistic goals if we think in terms of a global ethic, which is inherent in all the great religions of the world. Despite some theological common ground, the differences are probably too great for any realistic expectation of peace in this area.

In theology we can graciously "Agree to disagree," but this alone will not bring the peace and unity that has eluded us all these centuries. It is only in a global ethic that we can achieve sufficient common ground to join hands and work together for the alleviation of human suffering, and bring peace, justice, and equality to all peoples.

As Kung observes, there must be dialogue between the religions if we move together in these directions. Such dialogue has begun. The Parliament of the World Religions met in Chicago (U.S.A.) in 1993 and passed a "Declaration Toward a Global Ethic." This was the first time in history that representatives of the world's religions sat down together and attempted to formulate a basic ethical consensus that could be affirmed by all religions, despite their "dogmatic" differences, and supported by non-believers as well.

Already the international community has worked out transnational and transreligious legal structures without which international treaties would be meaningless. But there must be more than this. Without a global ethic that recognizes basic human values and moral standards that are binding on all humanity there can be neither peace nor unity.

This global ethic is to be discovered, not invented. That is, it is to be found in the essence of religion itself, in what makes religion, which has to do with relationships -- intimate, reverential relations between people and the Transcendent (God), and with each other.

All the world religions are concerned for such relationships, and it is this mutual concern for persons/God and person/person that provides the basis for a global ethic.

"Reverence for life," an ideal popularized by Albert Schweitzer but found in all religions, can serve as a giant step toward a workable global ethic. The religions refer to it different ways -- in terms of the sanctity of human personality, the dignity of humankind, or the uniqueness of the human spirit -- but however expressed, it honors the value of human life and provides a basis for social justice.

Judaism expresses this principle in three dimensions: "To do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God" (Micah 6:8).
Christianity has made it the "Golden Rule" in the ethics of Jesus Christ: "Whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them" (Matt. 7:12)

Confucianism, which is a religion of "relationships," has the same rule but states it negatively. When Confucius was asked if there was one word that would serve as a moral rule for all of life, he replied, "Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." So, Confucius might advise us that a global ethic in one word, reciprocity.

The Hindu scriptures also have the Golden Rule, but state it still differently: "Let not any man do unto another any act which he wisheth not done to himself, knowing it to be painful to himself. And let him purpose for another all that he wisheth for himself."

In Buddhism there is the ideal of the brotherhood of man and respect for all living things, which includes an abhorrence of killing in war and cruelty to animals.

Is not this principle of the sanctity of life a viable starting point in the creation of a global ethic? While each religion will have its own way of saying it (The Quakers, for instance, like to say, "There is something of God in all of us") and of implementing it, it serves as a basic norm and a common value for all religions. It is a moral principle that will both unite and make peace.

There are other approaches to the creation of a global ethic. One approach goes back as far as Aristotle, who taught that the good life is the life of virtue. The ethics of virtue would make an effective global ethic, it is argued. One reason for this is that a virtue is consistently and habitually manifest, as Aristotle put it. A just person or nation, for instance, does not do justice only occasionally, but it is a way of life. Truthfulness is a virtue, but only if it is consistently manifest.

Virtues are more easily named than defined. The following list includes virtues that have been recognized as such from ancient times.

benevolence (love)

faith
kindness
moderation
fairness
reasonableness
civility
generosity
self-control
compassion
hope
self-confidence
courage
honesty
sincerity
cooperation
industry
thoughtfulness
dependability
justice
tolerance

The list could of course be expanded. Indeed, the Bible (Jewish-Christian), the Koran (Islam), the Book of Filial Piety (Confucianism), the Laws of Manu (Hindu), the Way of Virtue (Buddhism) all have lists of virtues. Each has its own emphasis. For the Jewish prophets the virtue was justice. In the Christian scriptures it is love. In Buddhism it is self-renunciation. In Islam it is submission. The Laws of Manu in Hinduism lists ten virtues: contentment, truthfulness, purity, self-control, suppression of sensual appetite, respect for the property of others, wisdom, knowledge of the supreme soul, avoidance of anger, forgiveness or returning good for evil.

It is evident from such lists that the religions have an ethic of virtues in common. It is remarkable that no religion names as a virtue what any other religion sees as a vice. This commonality allows for a global ethic of virtues. Each and all religions can say, "This is who we are and this is what we believe, and this is the kind of world we can create together, a VIRTUOUS world."

Another impressive idea for a global ethic is what British philosopher David Ross referred to as "prima facie duties." This means duties that "at first sight" are admitted to be moral obligations.
They are self-evident and are to be admitted as valid as moral norms without further examination.
Ross saw such duties as absolute or near absolute, applicable to all people in all circumstances of life. The only exception is when one prima facie duty conflicts with another. His premise is that some things are to be done or not done because they are right or wrong in themselves, not because, for instance, that it achieves "the greatest good for the greatest number," as the utilitarians of his day argued.

Referring to one of his prima facie duties, Ross noted that one would not say he keeps a promise because in doing so it will produce the greatest good, but because he made the promise. He insisted that one is to keep his promise even if breaking his promise would produce the greatest good. The only exception to this would be if keeping one's promise conflicted with another prima facie duty. The problem would then be to weigh the duties against each other as to which would be greater.

Ross divided his list between acts of the past and those of the future.

1. Duty to keep a promise or contract. Based on previous acts of my own; if I have given my word the duty of fidelity obligates me to keep it even if I would do more good for more people by breaking it.

2. Duty of reparation. Also based on previous acts of my own; if I have injured someone or damaged his property I am obligated to make it right to the extent possible.

3. Duty of gratitude. Based on previous acts of others. My parents have done more for me than my neighbors, so my first obligation is to them, even if in helping my neighbors more good would be done.

The rest of the duties are future-looking.

4. Duty of beneficence. This is the duty to promote the maximum possible intrinsic good. This is the only duty emphasized by utilitarians, while to Ross it is but one duty among several.

5. Duty of nonmaleficence. The duty of not doing anyone any harm, which Ross saw as stronger than the duty of beneficence. I may have no obligation to help a stranger, but I certainly have a duty to do him no harm.

6. Duty of justice. This is different from beneficence in that it has to do with an equal distribution of good, not simply its quantity. This means that I am to distribute good to A and B equally, even if that means there is less total good distributed. We can't be unjust to a few however much good it might bring to the many.

7. Duty of self-improvement. If I can improve myself in respect of virtue or intelligence, or of health and wealth, I have a prima facie duty to do so.

These duties find support in the religions of the world, even by all people everywhere. Our moral sensitivity concedes "at first sight" that they hold claim on us as moral obligations.

It is arguable that even one or two of them could serve as a global ethic, such as the duty of doing no one any harm. Suppose all religions and all nations held this up as the one absolute universal rule: no person will do harm to any other person and no nation will do harm to any other nation? It is the only ethic we need to radically transform our world from a place of violence to a place of peace.

Or suppose we adopted as our rule that each person will be diligent to continually improve himself -- morally, socially, educationally, physically. It too would be a transforming world ethic.

These ideas are sufficient to show that an effective global ethic, one promoted by all the religions, is possible. We can be hopeful that such an ethic will soon be spelled out and made a part of the dynamics of the world religions.

But we are left with a profounder problem, and that is our apparent inability as human beings to do what we know to be right. We already know more ethics than we are practicing. Just as the religions know more true religion than they are practicing. Before any agreed-upon global ethic can work, we need to set our own houses in order, or as one prima facie duty insists upon, improve ourselves.

This means that Christianity must be more Christian, Buddhism must be more like what its founder envisioned. Islam and Hinduism must better exemplify it own ideals. We must all start practicing what we preach!

Any global ethic must therefore be religious, that is, it must have transcendent dynamics to draw upon to make it workable. We need not only an ethic, but spiritual resources to undergird the ethics. We simply cannot do it on our own. We need spiritual help.

This is why as a Christian I believe I have an advantage over other religions of the world. I have a Person to which to look, Jesus Christ himself, who exemplifies in his life and teaching all that could be included in a global ethic.

To the Christian Jesus Christ is his global ethic in that he personifies all the virtues discussed above. Moreover, faith in him provides the strength to do what is otherwise beyond our capacity. Even in reference to a global ethic, the Christian can say with the apostle Paul, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

The Historicity Of Jesus

David A. Fiensy

Though the phenomenon is relatively rare, there have been historians who maintained that Jesus was a purely mythical or fictional person. More importantly, many non-historians tend to doubt that he ever existed. This paper seeks to present five arguments for the historicity of Jesus. The five arguments are:

1. The evidence from the non-Christian sources
2. The argument based on the historical criterion of dissimilarity
3. The evidence from the letters of Paul
4. The results of the life of Jesus
5. And the consistency of the story of Jesus’ life with archaeological remains

1. The first text which I will quote in support of Jesus’ historicity is the Roman historian, Tacitus, who lived in the late first century and early second century:

The originator of this name (Christian) was Christ who was executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius. This pernicious superstition was repressed for a while but broke out again not only in Judea, the origin of the evil, but also throughout the city . . . (Annals 15.44)

This text confirms not only that Jesus existed but that he was crucified as the New Testament says and that the time of his death was the procuatorship of Pontius Pilate. It is very unlikely that this passage is a Christian composition, as some have said, since Tacitus calls Christianity a pernicious superstition (exitiabilis superstitio).

The next text is from the Jewish historian, Josephus, who lived in the latter half of the first century:

About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who wrought surprising feats and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemned him tobe crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. On the third day he appeared to them restored to life for the prophets of God had prophesied these and contless other marvellous things about him. And the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared (Antiquities 18.63f; translation in Feldman, Josephus)

The underlined portions of this quotation are obviously Christian interpolations into the text of Josephus. But is the whole passage spurious or inauthentic? That is not likely. First, there is another reference to Jesus in Josephus (The High Priest executed James “the brother of Jesus, called the Christ”; Antiquities 20.200) which has none of the glowing description of the above quoted section. Thus, Josephus certainly knew about Jesus. Second, there are two versions of Josephus in addition to the Greek manuscripts of his work. The Slavonic and especially the Arabic versions, which seem to give an earlier rescension of Josephus, do not have any of the statements underlined above. Third, Josephus narrates the story of John the Baptist (another character from the New Testament Gospels) in a lengthy passage (Antiquities 18.116-119). This story in Josephus shows no signs of Christian interpolation. The conclusion should be then that since Josephus knew about John and thought him important enough to tell his story, it is likely that he did the same for Jesus. Fourth, the passage about Jesus appears in every Greek manuscript of the Antiquities (133 of them) as well as in the Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Slavonic translations. Fifth, the Christian writer, Origen (third century AD), indicates that his text of Josephus contained the passage about Jesus but without the interpolations (Commentary on Matthew 10:17). Origen wrote that he was amazed that Josephus did not admit that Jesus was the Messiah. Thus, there is no convincing reason to challenge the authenticity of the paragraph in Josephus on Jesus. We should remove the underlined words since they were clearly inserted by later Christian copyists but the text is essentially from the first century Jewish historian, Josephus.

Josephus confirms the essential outline of the four New Testament Gospels: Jesus was a miracle worker and teacher who had a large following. He was condemned to death and crucified by Pontius Pilate. His followers still believe in him. This is roughly similar to the information in Tacitus.

In addition to these two very important authors there are numerous references to Jesus in the Jewish Talmud and in the pagan authors: Thallus, Phlegon, Lucius of Samosata, Mara Bar Serapieon, Suetonius, and Pliny. These sources which are usually derisive and sometimes even hostile toward Jesus give us the following picture of him: First, Jesus was a Jewish teacher. Second, many people believed that he performed healings and exorcisms. Third, some people believed that he was the Messiah. Fourth, he was rejected by the Jewish leaders. Fifth, he was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Sixth, in spite of his dishonorable death his followers who believed that he was still alive, spread far beyond Palestine. Seventh, people from the cities and countryside worshipped him as God. (Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ, p. 115).

One may agree or disagree with the early Christians’ appraisal of Jesus but to deny altogether that Jesus ever lived in light of the non-Christian references to Jesus seems to me very difficult.

2. The historical criterion of dissimilarity is that people tend not to create unflattering fictional sayings or events about heroes. For example, it is usually said of the sixteenth American president, Abraham Lincoln, that he was an ugly man. One child purportedly advised him to grow a beard to cover his unattractive face. I consider it very likely that Lincoln was ugly. In the first place, of course, we can view photographs of him. But even if we could not, the numerous references to his unattractive appearance--references to a man highly venerated by Americans--would convince me that he really was ugly. We would not make this up about one we value so highly.

The same is true of Jesus. Where we see examples of dissimilarity we should probably conclude that no first century writer created them. The following is a partial list of examples of dissimilarity in the New Testament Gospels: Some people questioned the legitimacy of Jesus’ birth (John 8:41); some questioned his educational qualifications (Mark 6:3-4; John 7:15); his home village did not accept him as Messiah or even as a teacher (Mark 6:5, Luke 4:29); his own family did not believe he was a prophet or Messiah (Mark 3:21, John 7:5); some accused him of doing exorcisms by using dark powers, in other words they accused him of witchcraft or sorcery (Mark 3:23-30, John 7:20); he was betrayed by one of his closest followers (Mark 14:10-11); at his arrest, his followers all ran away to save their lives (Mark 14:50); the great apostle Peter denied he ever knew Jesus in order to save his own hide (Mark 14:66-72); he was executed by crucifixion, considered an especially shameful death in the ancient world (Mark 15:24); while he was dying on the cross, he cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!”, an apparent statement of hopelessness; after his death, none of his closest followers came to claim his body and give him a decent Jewish burial (Mark 15:43). None of these events are very flattering to Jesus. People hinted that he was a bastard, said that he was crazy, and affirmed that he practiced witchcraft. He died in the most dishonorable way an ancient person could imagine. Surely, people who venerate a mythical figure do not make up such items.

3. One of the oldest documents witnessing to the life of Jesus is Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians written around AD 54. At several points Paul refers to Jesus’ teachings and events in his life (see e.g. 1 Corinthians 7:10). I wish to focus, however, on just two passages of 1 Corinthians: 11:23-26 and 15:3-11. In the first section Paul recounts Jesus’ institution of one of the sacraments: the eucharist. Paul says that Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on the night that he was betrayed and that he declared the symbols of the Passover, the bread and wine, to be his body and blood.

In the second text Paul gives a list of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after his burial in the tomb. Paul says that Jesus appeared after his crucifixion and burial to Peter, to the rest of the apostles, to James his unbelieving brother, and to a group of over five hundred people. Most of these witnesses, observes Paul were still alive at the time he was writing the letter to the Corinthians and thus could verify his account.

Not only is it very important that Paul was writing this while there were still living witnesses to verify his account, it is also important that he uses the language of careful transmission. He writes “what I have received, I delivered to you”. This is the terminology employed in Jewish circles for transmitting teaching from master to student. The rabbis memorized teaching from their masters and then taught it to their students. The terminology Paul was using indicates that these accounts were carefully taught by eyewitnesses to other people.

4. The results or effects that we clearly observe make it difficult to conclude that Jesus never lived. First of all we have the existence of the church. By all accounts, both pagan (Pliny, Tacitus) and Christian (see the Acts of the Apostles and Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History), it was not an easy life to be a Christian. There were persecutions and even death for many of them. Yet in spite of the dangers, many first century people insisted that they had known Jesus, had seen him after his death (i.e. resurrected), and believed that he was the Messiah and son of God. It is historically improbable that people would lie about something like this if that lie meant that they could be harmed. People usually lie to avoid harm not to invite it.

Second, we have the existence of the New Testament. It was written uncharacteristically soon after the death of the founder of Christianity. By comparison, the teachings of Zoroastrianism, from about 1000 BC, were not written down until the third century AD. Buddha lived in the sixth century BC but his biography was not written until the first century AD. Even Muhammad, who lived Ad 570 to 632, did not have a biography until AD 767, over a century after his death (see Strobel, The Case for Christ, p. 114). But the New Testament Gospels were written within a generation of Jesus’ death. It is agreed by most historians that the Gospel of John was written last of the four New Testament Gospels. We now have a fragment of a manuscript of that Gospel that dates from AD 125. This manuscript, found in Egypt, indicates that the actual composition of that Gospel must have been still earlier (probably no later than AD 100). If the Gospel of John was the last Gospel written, that means that the other three were still earlier than John (perhaps in the 60's or 70's). I think it is difficult to explain the sudden appearance of four biographies in the middle to late first century AD of a fictional, mythical person who was supposed to have lived only thirty to seventy years previously.

5. Finally, the particulars of the biographies of Jesus are consistent with archaeological remains. It was asserted by some, for example, that the alleged home village of Jesus, Nazareth (Matthew 2:23, Luke 2:39, Mark 1:24, John 1:46), was entirely fictional. It was not mentioned by Josephus, the Talmud, the Old Testament, or any other historian of the ancient world. That omission is not to me surprising, however, since Nazareth was evidently a very small village. Yet two kinds of material remains establish that there was a Nazareth in antiquity. An inscription was discovered in 1962 at Caesarea. It probably was on the wall of the Jewish synagogue in the third century AD. This inscription mentions that some priests lived in Nazareth. Second, archaeologists have excavated the modern town in Galilee called Nazareth by the Arabs and have discovered a first century village. The village had a population of around 480 people and was mostly devoted to agriculture (J. Finegan, Archaeology of the New Testament). This detail from the life of Jesus is important. Nazareth was apparently so insignificant that few ancient sources saw fit to mention it. Are we supposed to believe that all four writers of the New Testament Gospels, plus numerous other early Christian writers would select that village as the home of a fictional character?

Two other details can be mentioned quickly. The Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate while Joseph Caiaphas was the Jewish High Priest. Not only are both mentioned in Josephus and Pilate is mentioned by Tacitus but now we have inscriptions from Palestine that refer to them. Pilate’s inscription was found in Caesarea in 1961 and names him as the prefect of Judea (Finegan, Archaeology). The Caiaphas inscription was found in a tomb just south of Jerusalem. The inscription is on the side of an ossuary or bone box and reads simply “Joseph Caiaphas”. In other words, Caiaphas’ bones were contained in the stone box (R.Reich, “Caiaphas’ Names Inscribed on Bone Boxes” Biblical Archaeology Review 18/5 (1992) 38ff).

We could add scores of other discoveries to these, such as the excavations of Capernaum, Bethsaida, and in Jerusalem. I believe the point is made well enough, however, with these three examples. Now these material remains do not prove that Jesus existed but they are consistent with the biographical information offered by the New Testament Gospels. They confirm an important element in investigating any historical event or person. That element is called verisimilitude. In other words, the archaeological remains, accompanied by the ancient historical sources, furnish a background into which the life of Jesus fits comfortably. I do not think a fictional life would fit so well.

The above presented five arguments, I think, make a strong case that Jesus was an actual historical person. Taken together, they lead to the conclusion that Jesus of Nazareth lived, was crucified, and was believed by numerous persons to have been raised from the dead.

Referenced Literature
Louis H. Feldman, Josephus, Jewish Antiquities Books XVIII and XIX (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981)
Louis H. Feldman, "Josephus" Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Volume 3
Jack Finegan, Archaeology of the New Testament (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1969)
R. Reich, "Caiaphas' Name Inscribed on Bone Boxes" Biblical Archaeological Review 18/5 (1992) 38-44
Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998)