In their daily lives, human beings make decisions about what and how and why they want to do things. Sometimes such decisions are practical; for example, whether one walks to work or takes the train. On occasion such decisions are simply emotional ones; for example, whether one feels like wearing the red or the green dress to tonight's party. And sometimes they are ethical decisions; for example, deciding not to drink and drive. With each of these examples most people will agree that there are certain straightforward motives that explain why people make the decisions they do: it makes more sense; it feels better; it is 'the right thing to do', respectively.

On closer examination, however, one can see that such decisions are not as straightforward as they might at first appear. Walking to work can be a decision made for environmental as much as practical reasons. One might wear the red dress to avoid clashing with the hostess. And not drinking and driving is a very practical thing to do if one already has ten points on one’s driving licence. The reasons why we make certain decisions, therefore – even, perhaps especially, ethical ones – are complex. We might appeal to such concepts as justice, equality, freedom and civic consideration, but the ways in which such concepts justify or authorise our decisions always raise significant epistemological questions.1 That we normally answer these questions without too much thought does not mean that the questions disappear. It means, rather, that we are too often unreflective at just that point where we need to do most of our thinking.

What is it like to make a choice? The temptation we easily give way to is to think that it's always the same kind of thing; or that there's one kind of decision-making that's serious and authentic, and all other kinds ought to be like this. In our modern climate, the tendency is to imagine that choices are made by something called the individual will, faced with a series of clear alternatives, as if we were standing in front of the supermarket shelf. There may still be disagreement about what the 'right' choice would be, but we'd know what making the choice was all about. Perhaps for some people the right choice would be the one that best expressed my own individual and independent preference: I would be saying no to all attempts from outside to influence me or determine what I should do, so that my choice would really be mine. Or perhaps I would be wondering which alternative was the one that best corresponded to a code of rules: somewhere there would be one thing I could do that would be in accord with the system, and the challenge would be to spot which it was - though it might sometimes feel a bit like guessing which egg-cup had the coin under it in a game. But in any case the basic model would be much the same: the will looks hard at the range of options and settles for one.

The area 'other faiths and Christian ethics' raises many questions, only three of which I shall deal with in this chapter. The three areas overlap and the divisions are artificial, but they serve a pedagogical purpose. First, there is a phenomenological question: Do other faiths have similar material ethical goals to those of Christianity? The allied question is whether other faiths also share formal similarities, in terms of ethical reasoning and the understanding of ethics. The way in which these questions are answered on an empirical-historical basis may or may not affect theological considerations, and it may well be the case that theological assumptions generate a particular way of reading the signifcance of empirical findings. I believe the latter is true. This leads to the second area: Are Christian ethics sui generis? On the one hand, there are those who would argue that whatever the historical- empirical findings, Christian ethics are sui generis and phenomenological comparisons are of limited value, and especially so in coming to theological assessments of other religions. On the other hand, there are those who argue that Christian ethics have much in common with ethics from other religions and therefore the phenomenological findings are important theologically and feed into broader questions. For example, can Christianity make unique claims about 'holiness' and 'salvation', when other religions have the capacity to produce 'saints' that equal or better Christian saints? The third area has, in part, developed out of the second: Can the religions support a common understanding of universal human rights?

VARIETIES OF CHRISTIAN THOUGHT ON JUSTICE

The cultures in which Christianity flourished prior to the missionary expansion of recent centuries were deeply influenced by Christian notions, and in their turn shaped and perhaps sometimes distorted the expression of the Christian faith. It should not then be surprising if we discover that distinctively Christian ideas about justice which Christians, both Protestant and Roman Catholic, would wish to support and affirm have been deeply implanted in many modern cultures. The boundary between the religious and the secular in such matters is not always clear-cut or easy to discern. Themes like the human equality that the American Declaration of Independence thought 'self-evident' were not accepted as at all obviously true in a very different cultural environment such as that of traditional India. Indeed, in the course of time ideas and values absorbed from religious sources can become the almost unquestioned assumptions of later generations, commonly believed to be axiomatic, or the conclusion of a purely rational argument.

I am a Jewish Christian ethicist. I realise that this professional self-description admits of multiple interpretations, so let me explain. Both my parents were Jewish and I was raised in a home steeped in Jewish values. At the same time, neither parent was particularly devout in terms of religious practice. Hence, the word 'Jewish' in my self-description should be understood in broad cultural rather than explicitly religious terms. At university I studied moral philosophy and Christian ethics, continuing both emphases in my graduate work. As a result, I probably know more about the ethics of Thomas Aquinas, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Henry Sidgwick than I do about Solomon ibn Gabirol and Moses Maimonides.

Nevertheless,my Jewish background remains a permanent influence inmy life. Over the years, it has led me back to issues or questions in Jewish ethics and has resulted in numerous publications in which I have tried to interpret Jewish ethics to a non-Jewish audience or apply Jewish ethical thinking to emergent issues in applied ethics. Although I certainly lack the intense formal training in Jewish thought and philosophy of some who are professionally identified as Jewish ethicists, I am perhaps better qualified than many of them to think about Christian ethics from a philosophically informed Jewish perspective.

DEFINING THE TOPIC

The term 'gender' refers to the personality characteristics, behaviours and social roles that are expected of or assigned to an individual, depending on whether that individual is a male or a female.

Gender is different from biological sex. Although some individuals have ambiguous sex characteristics, the human species is in general sexually dimorphic. Humans come in two sexes, male and female, that cooperate for reproduction. Thus the sexual differentiation of individuals into male and female is taken for granted in virtually all societies, and some biologically based behaviours and roles are almost as universally associated with sexual differentiation. These are the behaviours and roles required for reproduction through sexual intercourse, pregnancy, birthing, and lactation and the associated care of infants.

Because pregnancy, birth and infant care require a protected environment, and because these activities have historically tended to reduce the ability of pregnant and child-bearing females to fend off enemies and obtain food for themselves and their young, corresponding male roles of hunter and protector have also developed. But it is precisely here that gender enters the picture as a problematic category. Even if some gender differentiation in the reproductive sphere is the natural consequence of sexual dimorphism, how far need gender difference extend in prescribing different psychological and cognitive traits in women and men, or different social roles in other areas? To what degree are women by nature designed for childbearing and child care, and men for warfare and material productivity? Are women meant to fulfil duties only in the domestic sphere, while men control the economic and political domains? To what degree are these roles pliable, able to be shared by adults of both sexes? Over the centuries and in many cultures, ethics (normative theories of morality and society) has included either explicit or implicit answers to such questions.

Many of the debates that have preoccupied the public generally and Christian ethics specifically with regard to business are in desperate need of modulation - especially by recalling and recasting the deeper theological resources, now widely forgotten, that have shaped contemporary economic life.Without understanding the roots of what we have, the dynamics of the present will not be accurately grasped and the capacity to direct the present towards a humane and just future will be limited. The problem is that theological and ethical assessments of economic life have largely accepted secular, materialist and political views of our past. That perception has distorted our moral vision.

In the long, slow process of ‘modernisation’, the nation-state gradually asserted its dominance over the household-based economy of feudal society. Both traditional households and governments were later threatened by the rise of an industrial economy, but only the nation-state was understood to have the wherewithal to control it. The socially and politically short twentieth century, which lasted basically from the outbreak of World War I in 1914 until the fall of the Wall in 1989, was thus a century dominated by issues of political economy, especially of tensions between the haves and the havenots. The struggles between and within nations about economic matters had essentially to do with the role of government in guiding industrial development and controlling its consequences. Most modern conventional understandings of business and economic ethics are shaped by these issues

OLD TESTAMENT OR JEWISH/HEBREW BIBLE?

In the past twenty years there has been a move in British and North American scholarship to use the term 'Hebrew Bible' (less often, 'Jewish Bible' or 'Jewish scriptures') in place of 'Old Testament'. The question affects ethics, as will be shown shortly. The reason for the move has been a wish to be sensitive to Judaism, and to avoid the impression, undoubtedly created in many people's minds by the term 'Old Testament', that the books designated by this name are inferior to or superseded by those known as the New Testament. In addition, there has been the feeling in some quarters that the Christian term 'Old Testament' is inappropriate in academia.

It is easier to be sympathetic to the reasons for the move than to feel that the underlying problem has been satisfactorily dealt with. The terms ‘Jewish Bible’ and ‘Jewish scriptures’ most naturally refer to texts held sacred by and used distinctively within Judaism. They are legitimate designations in that context. ‘Hebrew Bible’ is more problematic, because, on analogy with ‘English Bible’, it most naturally refers to the Bible in Hebrew, although few students who take courses in ‘Hebrew Bible’ in universities and colleges actually read it in that language. There is the further problem that ‘Hebrew Bible’ and ‘Old Testament’ are not synonymous. For the majority of Christians for most of the history of the church, ‘Old Testament’ has designated not only the twenty-four books of the Bible in Hebrew, but has also included the thirteen to sixteen books that Protestants call the Apocrypha but which are scripture for the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. A partial compromise would be for ‘Jewish Bible/scriptures’ to be used in the context of Judaism and ‘Old Testament’ in the context of Christianity.

In what follows, I will summarise elements of the emerging world debate over the family. I will set forth some of the facts and reasons that suggest this debate is not simply a product of conservative political rhetoric, although at times it is that. I contend that there is an emerging world family crisis, that it is worse in poor countries than in wealthy ones, that it is very debilitating even for rich societies, and that it is an independent variable undermining human wellbeing that is not reducible to poverty,war or natural catastrophe - all of which take their own tolls on families. I also believe that this crisis must be addressed at several levels - first at the religio-cultural level, then at the legal and economic levels, and finally at the level of education and individual development, in that order. This chapter will address primarily the first, the religio-cultural level. Addressing this level of human action is the central task of a practical or transformative Christian theological ethics.

ORIGINS

Themes akin to natural law emerged in Greek civilisation. The tragedian Sophocles (497-406 bce), for example, gave some indication of it in his depiction of the conflict between Antigone's obedience to King Creon and her stronger obligation to a higher law. Plato (428-348 bce) countered the relativism of the Sophists by arguing that goodness consists in living a life in accord with our rational nature and not in thoughtless social conformity. Aristotle (383-322 bce) followed suit in distinguishing the deeper 'natural justice' from what is legally just. For Aristotle, the good for every organism is 'to attain fully its natural activity'. Living 'according to nature' (kata physin) for human beings means living virtuously.

The cosmopolitan Stoics distinguished the human nature that pertains to all human beings as such from laws instituted by particular societies. They held that the right way to live can be discovered by intelligently conforming to the order residing in human nature. Their characteristic maxim – that we ought to live ‘according to nature’ – was an injunction to live virtuously rather than at the whim of fluctuating emotions or social approval.

A virtue is a trait of character or intellect which is in some way praiseworthy, admirable or desirable. When we refer to somebody's virtues, what we usually have in mind are relatively stable and effective dispositions to act in particular ways, as opposed to inclinations which are easily lost, or which do not consistently lead to corresponding kinds of action. And so, for example, someone who has the virtue of generosity will consistently respond in generous ways in a variety of situations, including those in which generosity is difficult or costly, in contrast to someone who is moved by pity to one uncharacteristically generous act, or someone whose generous impulses are frequently overcome by desires for self-indulgence. Today, the virtues are normally understood to be morally praiseworthy traits of character, but this has not always been the case; for example, many ancient and medieval writers considered intelligence and wit to be virtues.

Whilst it would be an overstatement to say that there are as many liberation theologies as there are practitioners, it is certainly true that liberation theology is not all of a piece. This is not just to point to the varieties of liberation theology - black, Asian, African, Jewish, feminist, womanist and so forth (and since feminist ethics are treated elsewhere in this volume, I will not deal with the subject here) - but to the variety of standpoints even within Latin America, where the movement started. Juan Luis Segundo, for example, had an essentially evolutionary understanding of reality which he shared with his fellow-Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin. He can cite with approval the view that every vice was probably at some time a virtue, and that what we call 'human beings' are only slowly emerging from the tangle of primitive drives and instincts. He frankly avows a situation ethic, an ethic in which the ends justify the means, but on the understanding that Christian ends are the most communitarian and generous-hearted imaginable. Míguez Bonino, on the other hand, offers us a survey of twentieth-century social ethics, but allows himself to formulate a principle which is virtually identical with utilitarianism: 'The basic ethical criterion is the maximising of universal human possibilities and the minimizing of human costs.'

The Midland region contains unspectacular countryside, except at its western and northern margins, and varied geology. The dominating features of its geography are three of the major drainage basins of England: the Severn, the Trent and the Ouse/Nene/Welland (Map 22.9). These river systems gave shape to sub-regions, provided easy transport routes to other parts of the country and ensured the prosperity of towns located on their banks and crossing places. The West Midlands is focused on the Severn, Warwickshire Avon, Wye and Teme valleys, whilst the Wiltshire Avon and the upper Thames form its southern bounds. The shire towns (except Stafford) were all located beside these rivers (Map 4.1). So, too, was the entrepôt trading centre of Bristol which became the largest city of the region since it was able to serve a large part of the South-West too. The Severn was navigable to Welshpool on the Welsh border. In contrast, the Trent was navigable only a few miles upstream from Nottingham, which is the only shire town located beside it, though Stafford, Leicester and Derby are on tributaries. The entrepôt of the Trent valley is Hull, which served the whole Yorkshire Ouse basin of the North of England too. The rivers draining the South-East Midlands reached the North Sea via the fenlands and their successful navigation depended on constant maintenance. Boston and Lynn were the major port towns, but the shire towns are also located on the principal rivers.

Measured in terms of their populations, twenty or so towns emerge as important provincial centres with some 2,000 taxpayers in 1377. To these must be added Exeter, which doubled in size during the fifteenth century to emerge as the third largest provincial town in 1524–5, and Edinburgh, whose population was growing towards c. 12,500 by 1560 (see Table 18.1). York alone achieved a size or status comparable to large European towns such as Antwerp, Bremen or Lyon. Most of the greater towns of Britain were distinguishable from market towns by the scale and intensity of their urbanity: physical size and appearance, complex internal economic and social structures, sophisticated government and regional significance. Even so, few enjoyed the close formal interdependence of a large Italian, French or German town with its contado or umland. In Britain, administration outside urban liberties commonly remained subject to the crown. Coventry, Gloucester and York were exceptions: Coventry by acquiring some 15,000 acres of the manor of Coventry, Gloucester through its incorporation of thirty or so villages in 1483, and York as the result of its jurisdiction over an adjacent rural wapentake, the Ainsty.

Population size in 1377 reflected the economic vitality of towns which had recovered from the depredations of the Black Death. Though population losses varied, it is likely that many of the greater towns lost a third to a half of their inhabitants between 1348 and 1349. Some, like Boston and Winchester, were already beyond their most successful phase by 1348–9 and retained their rank on the strength of earlier prosperity.