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Why God is Not a Consequentialist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

T. D. J. Chappell
T. D. J. Chappell
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Oxford, OX2 6UD
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Abstract

Can there be a moral philosophy which combines Christianity and consequentialism? John Stuart Mill himself claimed that these positions were, at the least, not mutually exclusive, and quite possibly even congenial to one another; and some recent work by Christian philosophers in America has resurrected this claim. But there is a simple argument to show that consequentialism and orthodox Christianity are not so much as jointly assertible.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , June 1993 , pp. 239 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism, ed. Mary, Warnock, p. 273:Google Scholar ‘We not uncommonly hear the doctrine of utility inveighed against as a godless doctrine… If it be a true belief that God desires, above all things, the happiness of his creatures, and that this was his purpose in their creation, utility is not only not a godless doctrine, but more profoundly religious than any other. If it be meant that utilitarianism does not recognise the revealed will of God as the supreme law of morals, I answer, that a utilitarian who believes in the perfect wisdom and goodness of God, necessarily believes that whatever God has thought fit to reveal on the subject of morals, must fulfil the requirements of utility in a supreme degree. But others besides utilitarians have been of opinion that the Christian revelation was intended… to inform the hearts and minds of mankind with a spirit which should enable them to find for themselves what is right… and that we need a doctrine of ethics, carefully followed out, to interpret to us the will of God.’

2 Charles Taliaferro, in an unpublished paper, ‘Taking Philosophy Seriously’, which he has kindly shown me, suggests that they are at least not obviously incompatible: ‘There are many schools of ethics, and prominent Christians have been found in most of them. It is a testimony to the richness of the faith that it is not anchored in one particular ethical philosophy, but is capable of being articulated in different, otherwise competing frameworks…’ (and Taliaferro goes on to cite virtue theory, the ethics of duty, and consequentialism as examples of such frameworks). Clement Dore evidently goes so far as to hold that Christians ought to be consequentialists: see his recent Moral Scepticism (London: Macmillan, 1991)Google Scholar.

3 The terms of this and similar definitions are, of course, deeply problematic. They may seem unintelligible to those of us who reject consequentialism. But that is not my concern here. Let us assume that consequentialism can, in this way, at least be given a clear enough meaning to be discussed.

4 Cf. Derek, Parfit, ‘Is Common Sense Morality Self-Defeating?’, in Samuel, Scheffler, ed., Consequentialism and its Critics (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.

5 The locus classicus is Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Prima Pars. See, e.g., 1a.4.1, 7.1–2, 8.2–4, and 1a.9.1, Main Article: ‘Omne quod movetur, motu suo aliquid acquirit, et pertingit ad illud ad quod prius non pertingebat. Deus autem, cum sit infinitus, comprehendens in se omnem plenitudinem perfectionis totius esse, non potest aliquid acquirere’.

6 Still less, on a consequentialist view, has God reason to create anything incapable of experiencing the happiness of good outcomes, e.g. anything inanimate.

7 The phrase is, of course, Mill's; see the quotation in note 1.

8 Here the Christian consequentialist might say that ‘God's plan is such that the suffering of creation will all be worth it in the end’, and point to Romans 8:18: ‘For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us’. But this response is an answer to the question ‘How, on a Christian–consequentialist view, can there be a fallen creation?’. As I have pointed out, the question ‘How, on a Christian–consequentialist view, can there be a creation at all?’ is prior to this question, and remains unanswered by such a response.

9 I am grateful to Richard Swinburne, Soren Riis and Tim Mulgan for their comments on this paper.