We hear much today, particularly from conservative American Christians, about the need to restore the Biblical view of the family. It is assumed by these spokespersons that the “Biblical family” is a male-dominated nuclear family consisting of a working husband, a non-working wife, who is full-time “mother”, and several dependent children. What is really being assumed here is that the Bible endorses a conservative version of the late Victorian, Anglo-Saxon patriarchal family. Such rhetoric about the “Biblical view of the family” lacks a sense of the socio-economic history of the family over the last three to four thousand years. It is taken for granted that this Victorian ideal of the patriarchal nuclear family was created in the Garden of Eden and has remained static ever since, until a recent period in the twentieth century when, for some inexplicable reason, it began to be “undermined” by feminism, gay rights and delinquent children. It is not necessary, then, to reflect upon the norm itself the forces that are challenging it, but simply to restore what is presumed to have always been, as the expression of God’s will.

Life stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending. Our sense of the ending depends on our basic faith concerning the ultimate meaning and value of our life story. The entire life story of Jesus Christ and its particular ending in the resurrection equips Christian faith with its sense of the ending of both our individual life stories and of the universal story that is history. The resurrection expresses the belief that the Storyteller’s Creator Spiritus of life-giving love, which enabled Jesus Christ to find his true story, also enables us to find our true stories with the same love that survives death in the resurrection of the just.

The story of the Last Judgment, which also expresses faith’s sense of an ending, implies that the love which survives death is a responsible love. We are responsible for the incipient life stories that we have gratuitously received; and we are responsible for finding our true stories in virtue of the life-giving love that we have received. Our freedom is such that we are not necessarily predetermined by the gift of the life-giving love to the finding of our true story. What has been freely received may be freely rejected.

Recently there has been considerable discussion in Christian circles about the relationship between Christianity and the world religions. Traditionally Christians have insisted that anyone outside the Church cannot be saved. To quote a classic instance of this view, the Council of Florence in 1483-45 declared that: ‘no one remaining outside the Catholic Church, not just pagans but also Jews or heretics or schismatics, can become partakers of eternal life: but they will go to everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels. Unless before the end of life they are joined to the Church’.

Increasingly, however, for many this view has seemed highly improbable in the light of contact with other faiths. An important document issued by the Catholic Church in 1965 (Nostra Aetate) for example declared that the truth which enlightens every man is reflected also in non-Christian religions. Nevertheless while recognising the value of other religions, this declaration maintains that the Christian is at the same time under the obligation to preach that Christ is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Liberation theologies provide a framework for serious reflection about systemic issues. But some liberation theologians, while urging social change, foster a guilt-inducing process which actually prevents both personal and social change. The tendency to moralize individual life is thus simply transposed into moralizing and collective issues. Absolute search for justice can even sometimes become offensive. The content of normative ethics is changed but the same guilt-inducing attitudes remain.

This article is concerned with the construction of a “liberation ethics” which goes beyond the mere transposition of idealistic moral philosophy to a new set of issues. It deals with the meaning of ethical principles and of sin, while constructing an ethics based on historical accounts of liberation. Interestingly, this approach is consonant with the “different voice” of women in ethics, as it has been analysed by scholars like Carol Gilligan.

The Shortcomings of Idealistic Ethics