After After Virtue

Each of us being a main character in his own drama plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others...

Like characters in a fictional narrative we do not know what will happen next, but nonetheless our lives have a certain form which projects itself towards our future...

The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man, and the virtues necessary for the seeking are those which will enable us to understand what more and what else the good life for man is.

- Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

It's time now to look at... the two main theories for how we might think about what to do: either you obey rules imposed from the outside, or you discover the deepest longings of your own heart and try to go with them. Most of us wobble about between the two, obeying at least some of the rules either because we think God wants us to or because of social convention, but going back to following our own dreams, our own fulfillment, when given the chance...

But what we notice in Mark 10 is something which seems to operate in a different dimension. For a start, it is a call, not to specific acts of behaviour, but to a type of character. For another thing, it is a call to see oneself as having a role to play within a story - and a story where, to join up with the first point, there is one supreme Character whose life is to be followed. And that Character seems to have his eye on a goal, and to be shaping his own life, and those of his followers, in relation to that goal.

All of this suggests that Mark's gospel, with Jesus himself as the great Character who stands behind it, is inviting us to something not so much like rule-keeping on the one hand or following our own dreams on the other, but a way of being human to which philosophers ancient and modern have given a particular name.

My contention in this book is that the New Testament invites its readers to learn how to be human in this particular way, which will both inform our moral judgments and form our characters so that we can live by their guidance. The name for this way of being human, this kind of transformation of character, is virtue. And when the early Christians, following Jesus himself, developed this notion, they did so in a way which transformed not only their characters but the notion of virtue itself. Hence the title of this book: Virtue Reborn.

- Tom Wright, Virtue Reborn

Sin and evil are self-centredness and pride that lead to oppression against others, but there are two forms of this. One form is being very bad and breaking all the rules, and the other form is being very good and keeping all the rules and becoming self-righteous.

There are two ways to be your own Saviour and Lord. The first is by saying, 'I am going to live my life the way I want.' The second is described by Flannery O'Connor, who wrote about one of her characters, Hazel Motes, that 'he knew that the best way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin'. If you are avoiding sin and living morally so that God will have to bless and save you, then ironically, you may be looking to Jesus as a teacher, model and helper but you are avoiding him as Saviour. You are trusting in your own goodness rather than in Jesus for your standing with God. You are trying to save yourself by following Jesus. That, ironically, is a rejection of the gospel of Jesus. It is a Christianised form of religion. It is possible to avoid Jesus as Saviour as much by keeping all the biblical rules as by breaking them.

Both religion (in which you build your identity on your moral achievements) and irreligion (in which you build your identity on some other secular pursuit or relationship) are, ultimately, spiritually identical courses to take. Both are 'sin'. Self-salvation through good works may produce a great deal of moral behaviour in your life, but inside you are filled with self-righteousness, cruelty and bigotry, and you are miserable. You are always comparing yourself to other people, and you are never sure you are being good enough. You cannot, therefore, deal with your hideousness and self-absorption through the moral law, by trying to be a good person through an act of the will. You need a complete transformation of the very motives of your heart.

The devil, if anything, prefers Pharisees - men and women who try to save themselves. They are more unhappy than either mature Christians or irreligious people, and they do a lot more spiritual damage.

- Tim Keller, The Reason for God

Link: Virtue Reborn (7 Jan 10)