In Approaches to Theological Ethics: Sources, Traditions, Visions, Maureen Junker-Kenny provides much-needed context to engage theological ethics meaningfully. Rather than an introduction to the discipline—being both too technical and focused in its aim for that—this book is a nuanced account of some of the discipline’s most prominent sources, traditions, and visions (how each model conceptualizes its aim and defines success). Through her incisive analysis of theological ethicists’ varying conceptions of the field’s foundation, means, and telos, Junker-Kenny creates space for productive contemplation on method. She dedicates the book to her students and colleagues, and, perhaps uncoincidentally, it reads as if emerging from this context, that is, dialogically. Rather than merely unloading information, Junker-Kenny writes in such a way that the reader is invited into the fundamental decisions and discussions explored.
In the first section, the sources Junker-Kenny analyzes are the Bible, tradition, normative accounts of the human person, and the human sciences. The author categorizes the first two as pertaining to revelation and the last two as pertaining to human reason. She argues for their fundamental compatibility, each distinct in its contribution to ethical inquiry and yet “not completely alien to each other” (80). After examining the sources of theological ethics, Junker-Kenny turns her attention to the discipline’s traditions, exploring the different “languages” through which an ethical account may choose to communicate itself. These include versions of virtue ethics, a Hauerwasian model that makes Christian worship central, natural law, approaches that underscore the importance of human autonomy, and feminist ethics. The first two emphasize “the particularity of Christian living,” while the second two emphasize “universalistic understandings of Christian ethics”—but each have subtypes that synthesize insights from the other (83). Finally, her section on visions analyzes the “distinctive paths” that different models of theological ethics set out on (194). She outlines three: William Cavanaugh’s “ecclesiocentric vision,” Lisa Cahill’s praxis-oriented vision, and David Tracy’s tripartite view, which sees theological ethics as primarily centered around “three publics”: the university, the church, and society.
What is most impressive about this book is the detailed analysis performed at each level of inquiry. Junker-Kenny is doing a great deal in all three sections, confronting a long list of complex questions, thinkers, and schools of thought—not to mention her incorporation of German sources previously untranslated into English, a great contribution to the field. The scope of Approaches to Theological Ethics is ambitious, but she tackles it while remaining utterly thorough. A close look at her treatment of the Bible—the first source she investigates—will help demonstrate that feat.
This subsection asks the question: In what way is the Bible norma normans non normata (the norm of norms that is not normed), and what does that mean for theological ethics? Junker-Kenny analyzes three possible answers. First, for the likes of Georg Steins and Stephen Barton, its authority is associated with the church, both in the historical work of its canonization and in the contemporary work of interpretation and appropriation. However, Junker-Kenny argues that subordinating the Bible’s authority to the church jeopardizes God’s revelation as extra nos (outside us), reduces its “universal salvific scope,” and undermines Christology. Another popular option is objectivist, wherein revelation is cognitive-propositional, the recipient is passive, and Jesus is primarily seen as a teacher of theoretical, divine truths (16). She argues that this also presents several problems, as it undercuts the significance of the historical person of Jesus and the human capacity of “free response” to those ethical truths he perfectly embodies. Further, it stymies theological debate over key issues relevant to ethics.
A third approach appeals to the Bible as “the most immediate, closest available account of Jesus Christ’s life and destiny” in substantiating its logical priority in relation to tradition (24). Junker-Kenny contends that this approach is preferable to the first insofar as it permits the Bible a critical position in the life of the church today, and it is preferable to the second in that, rather than turning a blind eye to hermeneutical concerns, it adopts God’s love—attested to and exemplified in the person of Jesus—as its guiding principle. In upholding Scripture’s authority as distinct from that of tradition, however, Junker-Kenny acknowledges that the two are internally related: we can only access the Bible on the other side of its canonization. Only in upholding the logical order proper to Scripture and tradition does their dynamic interplay emerge in full. Thus, Junker-Kenny’s preferred approach steers clear of collapsing the two into each other while simultaneously giving tradition its due attention (specifically, in the next subsection). Anchoring the Bible’s authority in “the historical person of Jesus in his universal significance,” this approach underscores the importance of rigorous exegesis and the plurality of biblical portrayals of Jesus’ life, which together show that their ethical content is not reducible to a set of scattered commands (25).
To illustrate her concern regarding scholars’ frequent failure to engage the New Testament on a historical-exegetical level and to instead employ it “as a projection screen for present interests,” she turns to Stanley Hauerwas (221). Junker-Kenny claims that Hauerwas bases “a whole approach to Christian ethics on one verse,” Matthew 3:15, where Jesus tells John that he must baptize him “to fulfill all righteousness.” While Matthew 3:15 is central to Hauerwas’ theory, it would be more accurate to say that he bases his entire approach not on the verse itself but on what it attests to. Hauerwas posits that “the foundation, the source, the context, and the content of Christian ethics…lie in God’s gracious action, crystallized in the baptism of Christ” (The Blackwell Companion to Christian Ethics, Wiley-Blackwell, 2006, 15). Thus, while it is true that Hauerwas’ interpretation of this verse could benefit from some exegetical comparison across the four gospels, to say he grounds his entire approach on a single, decontextualized verse is a bit imprecise. Also, I was surprised to see that Junker-Kenny does not interact with Nicholas Healy’s Hauerwas: A (Very) Critical Introduction (Eerdmans, 2014), as some of her critiques are reminiscent of his, especially what she calls Hauerwas’ “ecclesiomonism” (and what Healy calls his “ecclesism”).
Junker-Kenny expresses two primary interests in writing Approaches: (1) situating theological ethics in its ongoing conversation with philosophical ethics and (2) analyzing not what unites the discipline but rather its “internal diversity,” which she does by exploring the varying sources and traditions it draws on (1). This work succeeds in both aims, providing an impressive analysis of where and how theological ethics intersects with philosophy and the ways in which these intersections have created divergence within the discipline. This book is not for the uninitiated and is probably best suited for a graduate classroom setting, though anyone with a serious interest in the field will find its contents rigorous and illuminating.
Noah R. Karger is a master of divinity student at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Noah R. Karger
Date Of Review:
March 27, 2023