Definition: Casuistry.

Yesterday, I spoke about casuistry in relation to Mark 7:10-13. The word, casuistry, is derived from the Latin word casus, which means “event” or “case.”  The benign definition of casuistry is that it is a discipline within ethics which deals with ambiguous issues of right and wrong.  The most common use of the word today is more sinister: it is described as sophistical reasoning used in matters of ethics.

Sophism (from the Greek word Σοφία = “wisdom”) comes from the ancient Greek Sophists who developed elaborate philosophical and rhetorical arguments to teach excellence and virtue to young men.  The catch was that they charged for their teachings.

Socrates refused to take any money for teaching and considered the practice by the Sophists to be deceptive and specious.  From this developed the modern English use of the word: a specious argument used to deceive and to obscure one’s true intent.  There are many modern examples of this practice.

Ethical Complicity

It should be emphatically pointed out to those who use illegal mind-altering substances that they are ethically complicit in all the crimes committed to get their drugs into their possession: smuggling, beatings, theft, extortion, bribery, and murder. And those who binge drink need to be constantly reminded of the horrible results of binge drinking: cirrhosis, fetal injury or death, domestic violence, broken family relationships, body-mangling automobile accidents and other emotional, financial, physical, and spiritual carnage.

Several Random Indications That we Live in a Morally and Ethically Bankrupt World

1. A woman being offended that I dared to open a door for her.
2. A policeman turning on his blue lights and siren so he can pass through a red traffic light, then turning them off and resuming normal speed.
3. Able bodied persons taking handicapped parking spaces, using their handicapped aunt's parking sticker; some even using counterfeit stickers and placards.
4. Millions of persons download music illegally from the internet, and the business in pirated movie DVD's is a billion dollar affair.
5. Americans and Europeans consume billions of dollars worth of illegal drugs annually, ignoring the fact that the drug trade is built on smuggling, murder, theft, bribery, the use of children as "mules," and the fact that a large portion of the financing for international terrorism comes from the illegal drug trade.
6. Thinking that the hip-hop/rap music culture (based on the glorification of violence and mysogyny) is somehow "authentically  black."
7. 95% of US high school students admit to having cheated on their school work at least once.
8. As many as 22% of married men, and 14% of married women, have had at least one extramarital affair even though up to 90% of Americans say that marital infidelity is wrong.
9. Sexual abuse of children by schoolteachers, pastors, and priests is increasingly reported worldwide.
10. Abortions in the United States: 193,491 i 1970; 1,429,279 in 1990; 820,151 in 2005.

The list could go on and on.

Book Comment: Ethics Without God

Ethics Without God, by Kai Nielsen, admits that a reasonable person can be a Christian but adds that a reasonable person who has had a full education cannot be a Christian. So, though Nielsen goes out of his way to seem reasonable, in the end his judgement of Christianity and Christians is an insult. He rejects the basic assumptions of Christianity as unnecessary and illogical. He believes that secularization is inevitable "as we move away from a peasant society."

Nielsen rejects the idea that only religion, and more specifically Christianity, can provide a purpose in life. He agrees that a life with no purpose would be awful. He finds purpose in science, logic, and ethical behavior and says that Christianity has "incoherence" in it. Another insult said with a sweet smile.

"Perhaps we have even more reason to love each other if there is no God for then the only thing we have is each other."

Nielsen, Kai, Ethics Without God (Rev. ed.: Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 1990)

Christians

At some time during their lives, the following people have publicly identified themselves as Christian.   Inclusion in this list does not indicate approval or disapproval of the person, their religious beliefs, or their actions.  This is a recurring segment in this blog.

Elizabeth Fairburn Colenso: (b. 1821, New Zealand - b. 1904) Missionary, school teacher,  and Bible translator in New Zealand.  She was fluent in Maori and Mota.  Her husband, Anglican missionary, William Colenso, was fired by his missionary society employers for infidelity (he fathered illegitimate children by two Maori women) and Mrs. Colenso continued in her missionary activities without his involvement. 

William Colenso: (b. 1811, Cornwall - 1899) Printer, botanist, author, explorer, politician, Anglican missionary to New Zealand.  He was a cousin of John William Colenso, Bishop of Natal.  Colenso was fired by his missionary society employers for infidelity (he fathered illegitimate children by two Maori women) and his wife (see above) carried on her work without him.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: (b. 1772, England - d. 1834)Poet, intellectual, lecturer, pantheist.  He translated German works into English.  His understanding of Christianity was that it is primarily related to ethics.

William the Pious, Duke of Aquitaine:  About 909 or 910 he founded the Benedictine monastery at Cluny, France.  The ultra-pious Cluniac rule of order was adopted by about 600 other monasteries.

James Warren Jones: (b. 1931, Indiana - d. 1978) Pentecostal social activist, founder of Wings of Deliverance Church which became the People's Temple Full Gospel Church.  On 18 Nov. 1978 he led 913 of his followers in Guyana in a mass murder-suicide by poisoning.

 

Governor Mark Sanford should be fired.

     On 6 July 2009, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (an avowed Christian and a "family values" politician) was censured by the South Carolina Republican Party for his week-long unexplained absence from the state which his staff thought was a hiking trip in the Appalachian Mountains.  The truth was that he was in Argentina visiting his mistress of several years.  He should resign or face impeachment, conviction, and removal from office, but not for his admitted marital infidelity.

     He joins a long line of public officials who have gotten caught up in sexual immorality. Sex is readily available from many sources to those who have money or positions of power.  The temptation to abuse a position of power for sex (or money, or influence, or whatever) seems to be almost impossible to resist.

     However, calls for Sanford's resignation because of his philandering are misplaced.  Even full-blown libertinism would be not be grounds for dismissal or resignation.  A governor's job description does not require that he or she be a good person or act properly (as long as no ethics laws are violated).  Many politicians have survived worse scandals than the one in which Sanford is embroiled.

     The reason Sanford should step down is his unexplained and unexcused absence from his job for six days.  It's called dereliction of duty and abandonment of position (and possibly, misuse of public funds).  Ask your boss what would happen to you failed to show up for work for six days with no explanation.  Multiply that by responsibility for thousands of employees, millions of dollars in programs, and responsibility for oversight of the state national guard and civil defense.